


Within the Weave

by pagerunner



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23257696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagerunner/pseuds/pagerunner
Summary: Strange things are afoot in Whitestone's graveyard. The supposed heroes who saved the town seem to have been the ones to build an eerie, dark new shrine. And after a dare she can't resist to find out what's happening, the daughter of the old gravedigger comes face to face with a winged terror...who might, to her surprise, not actually be a terror at all. An outsider's look at the Raven Queen's shrine and Vax, Her chosen champion, written for the Folk Tales of Exandria collection.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41
Collections: Folk Tales of Exandria





	Within the Weave

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story last year for a fantastic fic zine, which is also now getting collected on AO3. Check out the stories by the other contributors while you're at it. For those of you who heard about this story from me a long time ago, I hope it's worth the wait. :)

Callie Holloway went to Whitestone’s graveyard at twilight, when the Greyfield best lived up to its name.

All around her, the grounds were shadowed and still. Some things were tinted a muted green, others slate and sable, but mostly it was gray, everything gray, from the stones to the dimming skies above. Gravel crunched audibly beneath her feet, and she knew she was announcing her presence to anyone nearby. Like the Paleguard, if they realized she’d used her old key on the maintenance gate to sneak past their patrol. Or wild animals.

Or worse.

Warily contemplating the mouldering graves, Callie kept herself to the path and did her best not to disturb a single soul.

 _I should never have told Dillon I’d do this,_ she thought, but she’d made him a promise. Her brother did have a way of cornering her into these things. He’d told her last night that he’d seen a mysterious figure sneaking into the graveyard, cloaked and horned, getting up to something in one of the mausoleums. To hear him tell it, sinister plans were definitely afoot. Callie, usually skeptical about his tales, was less sure of that. But after everything the Briarwoods had done to this place, this story was uncomfortably easy to imagine—and so against all common sense, she’d agreed to find out if he was right.

She just hoped he was wrong about one or two of the details.

 _The town’s been liberated,_ she told herself, in echo of what she’d reminded her brother. _If it really was a tieflng you saw, she’s probably that friend of Vox Machina’s; they’re the ones who_ saved _us. They wouldn’t be doing anything terrible here. It has to be something else._

_It must be…_

She raised her gaze and saw a familiar old mausoleum, one that had had its family crest mysteriously removed.

“That’s the one,” she murmured.

She’d been here before, many times, although it had been under much different circumstances. For years their father had been the groundskeeper of the Greyfield, and they’d helped him tend to the place, learning the grounds and the memorials by heart. The Anders mausoleum hadn’t had much to distinguish it beyond its age, but it stood at the end of a small pathway, nestled between trees and greenery that granted it some privacy. That fact had likely been exploited by whoever had come calling, because Dillon hadn’t been wrong about that part: someone clearly had. There were signs of recent footprints before the door, and three dark, incongruous splashes across the stonework. Water stains would be one thing, mud or leaves or scattered gravel, but these…

Callie, her stomach sinking, bent closer. Human though she might have been, she’d inherited just enough from a crooked branch of the family tree to see uncommonly well in the dark. Even shadowed as they were, those spots on the stonework were unmistakably red.

Callie made a small noise and backed up.

Something behind her answered the sound.

Callie spun around. The graveyard still looked empty enough that she tried to convince herself it was only echoes, or a bird far too clever at copying voices. She reached for the little knife she’d stuck into her belt anyway. Even before the Briarwoods’ time, there had been stories of what the soulless, starving dead could become…

 _Don’t you worry about those,_ her father had chuckled when Dillon repeated one of those stories to him. _I’ll keep any beasties well at bay._

That may have been the case before, but her father wasn’t here now.

And something out there was lurching into view.

The silhouette was human, barely. Its movements were erratic and out of sync. Slowly it made its way into the fading light, and Callie saw that it was gray with decay, losing fragments as it walked. There was no real aim to its actions. It merely...wandered, its head lolling, its empty eyes roving. The lingering necromantic magic here had obviously done its work: Delilah Briarwood’s power and will, strong enough to poison the soil and outlast even her.

 _They say she could make the dead dance,_ Callie thought, even as she backed away, hoping desperately the zombie hadn’t noticed her. _A whole ballroom full of the people she killed, whirling and whirling until they fell to pieces…_

“Stop it,” she whispered, abruptly furious at herself. This was hardly the time to panic over stories. “Just _run._ ”

Unfortunately, speaking aloud was a mistake. Completely unfairly for a creature whose ears had rotted away, it lifted its head and turned straight toward her.

When its jaw gaped open, Callie screamed.

The sound shot through the air, startling a flock of ravens that burst from the trees. Behind that rush of motion, the undead thing started staggering down the path. Callie jerked backward, slamming against the mausoleum door and nearly dropping the knife. She fumbled for it, gasping—and the zombie _howled._ Nothing should have been able to make that sound. Certainly nothing that had ever been human.

Callie looked frantically around, but with the path blocked and untrimmed brambles surrounding her, there was really nowhere to go. She grabbed for the handle of the door instead.

She was still struggling to wrest it open when a swirl of blackness descended, as dark as the ravens on the wing.

Callie had the brief, horrible thought—Dillon would have been proud to have inspired it in her, really—that something even worse had arrived, some dark spirit joining its horrible ally. But then she got a brief impression of light, three bright shots of it, as if reflected off blades. When they thudded home, the creature gurgled and slumped to the stones.

Callie shoved herself through the door before anything could take aim at her, too, and dragged it shut with enough force that she lost balance and fell.

Inside everything was black, until soft little lights began coming to life around her.

Callie slowly, painfully got to her feet, her shock fading into puzzlement. Candles set into niches along the walls had begun to illuminate the room. The brightest candlelight drew her attention to a raised basin at the far end of the chamber.

Feeling weirdly compelled, Callie took one cautious step toward it.

 _This isn’t right,_ she thought. This room had contained remains before, but those had been replaced by inexplicable relics. For a moment she lingered over a slender skein wound with golden thread, feeling irresistibly curious but wary just the same.

She was standing there, fingers a bare inch from the thread, when she began to smell something unsettling.

The odor cut through the faint aroma of the candles, enough to make Callie wrinkle her nose. It was uncomfortably, forebodingly familiar. She eyed the dais where the pedestal stood, seeing that it bore a wide, round basin, surrounded by candles. There was liquid inside it, almost reaching the brim.

From here, that liquid looked disconcertingly dark.

And when she drew close enough to see her own reflection on its surface, she could tell beyond a doubt it was blood.

“Oh, gods,” she said weakly, before pressing one hand over her mouth and nose. The immensity of her situation was pressing in. She was trapped here, with gods knew what going on outside, and if anyone found her here with their secret, she was done for—because _nothing_ good could be coming of this. Blood on the altar, and some sort of awful ritual at work…

 _I should have believed you, Dillon,_ she thought. _We’re not free of anything yet, are we?_

Before she’d even finished the thought, there was a scraping noise. The door had begun to move once more.

Callie’s knees wobbled. Bereft of options, she dropped to the floor, her back against the pedestal, and drew that little, pathetic knife. She was holding it out in trembling hands when the mausoleum doors opened wide, revealing the massive silhouette on the other side.

It took Callie a minute to make sense of it: too wide, too dark, far too indistinct. It was all too easy to imagine any number of monstrous things. But oddly, the figure at the center looked almost human. And the shapes to either side…she slowly realized that they were wings. Great, black, feathered wings, large and strong enough to carry a man into the sky.

They also made it difficult for him to fit through the door, so there was a moment of muttering and awkward side-stepping before he got far enough inside for the candlelight to reveal his face. When they saw each other properly, his eyes widened.

“Well,” he said. “You’re not what I expected.”

If Callie could have spoken just then, she could have said the same.

The man was strange by any measure—he was wearing a raven skull of all things around his neck, and of course there were those _wings_ —but his expression held no hostility. He had to be elven in part, going by those ears, and if she hadn’t been so panicked, she probably would have found him handsome. And while he was still holding a dagger, it wasn’t pointed at her. He was sheathing it, in fact, and offering his hand instead.

“Why don’t you put that away,” he said, “so we can talk?”

Callie blinked dumbly. She was still brandishing that useless little knife. Blushing, she tucked it away and considered the offer. His hand was slender but obviously strong, and there was an interesting mark tattooed on his inner wrist, some sort of geometric shape she didn’t immediately recognize.

Dillon probably would have had a theory. He’d have said it had some sort of eldritch significance. Callie, who was far too off-balance to worry about it now, took the man’s hand and let him tug her upright.

“That’s better.” The man helped steady her. “Now. I’m going to ask what you’re doing here, but as terrified as you look, I’m guessing this isn’t some devious plan to lure me to my doom.”

Callie floundered. “Um.”

“And you weren’t hurt, were you? That thing outside is dead, by the way. Again.”

“Oh.” She swallowed and rubbed her arms. She wondered who the undead person had been. She suspected knowing would only make it worse. “I’m…I’m fine.”

“So what’s your name?”

“Calanthe,” she said, stumbling straight into honesty, although silence might have been wiser. “I mean…no one calls me that, it’s a mouthful. Callie.”

“It’s a flower, isn’t it?”

Disconcerted, she nodded. He bowed briefly. “Well, then, Callie. Vax’ildan Vessar, at your service. Call me Vax.”

At that, she gave up and simply gaped.

 _Vax?_ a voice in the back of her head demanded. _Vax’ildan-of-Vox-Machina Vax?_ It seemed impossible, but then again…there had been stories. Stories about a clever rogue, quick and deadly with his daggers, and his dashing sister and her bear. They and their friends had fought alongside one of the lost de Rolos in the rebellion that finally saved Whitestone. They’d come and gone from town since, and tales had trickled back about their exploits, but obviously she’d missed a few of those, because one thing was still foremost in her mind: “Since when have you had _wings_ ?”

Vax gave a brief laugh. “They came with the armor. Long story. But they’re real enough, at least for a time. Touch one, see for yourself.”

Callie hesitated, but he gestured encouragement. Her fingers brushed one long pinion. Vax gave half a smile. “They’re useful, I admit. But they’re also unwieldy in small spaces. So…”

He shrugged his shoulders, and Callie jumped back when the wings flared and suddenly dispersed into thin air. Only a few small, black feathers fluttered free, still real, at least for the moment. One of them drifted to a stop beside Callie’s foot. She stared, then lifted her head.

There were raven feathers lying beside that spool of thread, too.

“Oh,” she said, wary once more.

Vax took in her expression. “I suppose this place does bear some explanation,” he said. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“It looks like something terrible.”

“It’s a shrine to a goddess. Not an evil one, despite the…”

“Despite the _blood_ ?”

He looked like he’d anticipated that. “Even so. And it was made for me as a favor.” Vax reached out and touched one of the feathers, a strange smile playing at his lips. “But Freddie always did have a flair for the dramatic about these things.”

She didn’t know what he meant by that, but she didn’t have time to ask. He waved her forward. “Come here. Let me show you something.” 

Callie went along, unsure what else there was to be done. “What god do you worship, Callie?” he asked as they walked. “Or do you worship at all?”

The honest answer was “barely.” Her father hadn’t had much use for religion, and she hadn’t been to temple since she was tiny. Still, there was an obvious choice. “Pelor, I suppose. He’s Whitestone’s patron, everyone does…”

“Did they teach you about the other gods? Like the Raven Queen?”

“A little. My father…he called the bodies the Raven Queen’s leftovers, once or twice.”

“I’m sorry?”

That probably, Callie realized, bore some explanation, too. “He used to help with burials here.”

“Ah.” Vax paused. “Used to?”

“He’s dead,” she said shortly.

Sympathy flickered across his face. “Well. She’s the goddess of death. The moment of death, that is, and the transition to the afterlife. Also of winter. And…” A stranger expression crossed his face. He looked back at the skein. “Of fate.”

He had not, Callie noticed, touched the thread, either.

“I came to be Her champion,” Vax said softly. “She cannot abide the undead, nor unnatural prolonging of life. In that, I serve Her will.”

“So that’s why you came here.”

He nodded. Callie edged forward. There was such sadness in his eyes, and she wondered, suddenly, how one could become tied to such a goddess. “So why were _you_ here, Miss Callie?”

Dillon would have spun him a tale, but Callie braced herself and told him. “My brother saw someone sneaking into this mausoleum. He shouldn’t have been out here; this place still isn’t safe, I know. But he’s so stubborn. And after everything that happened here…he’s got some right to be suspicious. He doesn’t really trust anyone anymore.”

“I expect not. I know things were hard.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, suddenly angry. “You weren’t here when the Briarwoods took over this place. They sent five armed bullies after my father, and called it ‘relieving him of his duties.’ You have no idea.”

“I have some,” Vax murmured. “I’m sorry.”

It didn’t really help. She turned aside, hugging her arms around herself. It put the basin back in her line of sight, and she stared at it for a while.

“I told Dillon I’d bring back proof,” she said eventually. “I didn’t want him sticking his nose in and getting hurt, but...I had to know, too. _Especially_ if it was a friend of yours, doing all this.” She waved shakily at the basin of blood. “If we can’t trust the people who supposedly saved us…”

Vax let out a long breath.

“I promise, nothing evil was meant by all this,” he told her, sounding both regretful and sincere. “But anything so closely tied with death…it’s easy to misinterpret or to fear. I know.”

“So whose blood is it?” she whispered. “And what’s it for?”

“Whose? I don’t know,” Vax admitted. “It’s from the butcher’s, I expect. Freddie wouldn’t have hurt anyone for it.” He stopped to reconsider. “Unless he was having a _really_ bad day, I suppose. But he’d know better than to do that for this.”

Callie still wanted to ask who Freddie was, but she held her tongue. Vax stepped onto the dais. Callie went with him. 

“He said he added a vial from the Raven Queen’s temple in Vasselheim.” Vax gingerly touched the basin’s edge. “Since then, it’s never spoiled.”

“They have one of these, too?”

“Mmh. Theirs is…larger,” he said evasively. “But when I pray here, sometimes I can hear Her.”

She tried to imagine how that tied together, and came up short. “So…you just look at the blood and think really hard?”

It came out more pointedly than she’d perhaps meant it to. Vax eyed her in return. “Contact helps.”

 _Contact._ She looked at his hands again. The right hand’s palm was pale and clean. On the left, there was, perhaps, a hint of lingering color. She rubbed her thumb over her fingertips, queasy at the idea that was forming, but thinking hard. “Does it work for anyone, or just you?”

“Why do you ask?”

Callie hesitated a moment before plunging forward. “Because I want to ask Her something myself.”

For a second, he said nothing. The surprise on his face slowly transmuted into a deep frown. “This isn’t something to be trifled with.”

Callie shook her head. “I’m not trifling with anything. I mean it. And, well…whether I get answered or not, I told Dillon I’d bring back proof of what I saw. A bloodstain will do.”

Vax remained unconvinced. “This is a terrible idea.”

“If so,” she countered, pointing at the basin, “then were you lying about this not being something to fear?”

He opened his mouth, shut it again. “You’re beginning to remind me of _my_ sister,” he said dryly. “Fine. I’m not sure you’ll get what you want, but if you insist.” When she made to move forward, he raised a hand. “But you’re not doing it alone. I’ll stand with you. Besides, I am Her champion. It may help.”

Callie took a deep breath. At the renewed scent of the blood, she wished she hadn’t. “All right. Then how do I do this?”

“Just touch the surface gently, and send out your thoughts.”

It took a few seconds to work up the nerve, but shakily she lowered her hand and broke the surface.

The first thing she noticed was the blood’s unnatural coldness, sending goosebumps up her arm. She’d also been hoping the liquid would feel like water, but the thickness was all wrong. It took everything she had to keep her hand in place and form a simple plea: _Is this place really what he says?_

Her trembling hand made her reflection waver. Nothing else moved, and nothing answered, and she had an awful moment of feeling utterly foolish. But before she could back away, she felt Vax’s steadying hand on her shoulder. Callie shut her eyes.

The blood’s odor faded. In its place she smelled lilies and orchids, the scent of countless funerals. And when she lifted her hand—had she actually opened her eyes again, or not?—she didn’t see red stains, just a trace of dirt and stray grass clippings, like she’d been outside helping tend the graves on any ordinary day.

 _Graveyard’s daughter,_ someone whispered, in a voice that echoed right down to her bones. _Look closer._

Helpless to do anything else, she did. This time, she noticed a slender golden thread twining around her wrist. It glinted oddly in the light. When something tugged on its trailing thread, she turned around, entirely unsure what she’d find.

Vax had vanished. So had the mausoleum. She stood in a vast, dark space, boundless, crowned only by the specks of distant stars. Before her were isolated islands of something recognizable: the altar and its immediate surroundings, repeated over and over. Standing in little pools of candlelight were the same dais, the same pedestal, the same stone floor. But at each altar, she saw different people at different moments, like individual memories of the place preserved.

Callie stepped slowly forward to study each scene.

She saw the tiefling woman Dillon had described, the one who’d started all this, looking far less malicious than Callie had feared. She was richly dressed and magnificent in bearing, and was putting the basin into place with all due reverence. The golden threads around her seemed merely like ornamentation, draped gracefully among the jewelry on her horns.

Callie saw, too, a shockingly recognizable figure—and now she knew who this _Freddie_ was, even if that was only a fragment of his noble name—entangled in ropes of gold and shadow both. He was standing over the basin, pondering the vial in his hand. He seemed conflicted about his duty at best.

Then there was Vax again, unarmored, vulnerable, making a hesitant attempt to speak to his goddess. There was an undeniable air of melancholy about him. Still, there was also something else. Callie tilted her head to see better. From one angle, his expression showed resignation. From another, there was resolve. She felt oddly certain that he, too, was reaching out for something to believe in.

And he was entangled in so many threads that the gleaming web of it made her dizzy. 

The pattern seemed to stretch out forever, linking everyone in the room and so much more besides. Callie, feeling very small, turned to follow the threads. The scenes she’d witnessed dwindled to single points of light, all of them connected by the weave. The pattern, though, had a distinct center. Callie could see a single, black-clad figure there, somehow massive in scale and oddly human all at the same time. And it—no, _she_ —had her head bent over something.

It was the golden skein.

The woman lifted one hand, reaching for one of the infinite threads that spooled out from it. When she also raised her head, Callie had the impression of a masked face staring out at her. The obfuscation was fortunate, really, because she could tell that she couldn’t have borne the full force of this woman’s regard even for a second.

But she knew now that absolutely _nothing_ about this was a lie.

 _Remember that,_ She said. _And tell it true._

The goddess gently plucked the string, and the vibration struck Callie so keenly that she was jolted straight out of the vision.

She stumbled back, almost off the dais. Vax, fortunately, was there to catch her. Blood drops flew off her fingertips as her hand left the basin. “Hey,” Vax said, while he moved to help prop her up. “Are you all right?”

Callie did her best to get her feet under her, but she was all turned around. Her head ached. Vax sat her down at the edge of the dais, then produced a cloth from somewhere and started wiping her hand dry. She watched the evidence of what she’d done gradually vanish, and she murmured faintly, but she didn’t find words before he was finished.

“I gather,” he said lightly, “you heard something.”

She didn’t bother answering. She made a bleary survey of the room instead. Solid walls again. A ceiling. Everything at ordinary scale. When she saw the skein, though, she paused. It looked more or less the same as she remembered, but she was _sure_ it had been tilted at a different angle.

“Did you touch that?” she asked, pointing.

Vax gave her a look that she couldn’t read at all. “No.”

Callie stared silently for a while before saying, simply, “I believe you.”

He didn’t respond, but she had the feeling that he’d understood exactly how much she’d meant by that.

When her strength came back, he walked her outside. Callie didn’t realize until she tasted fresh air that she’d desperately needed it, and so she stood at the threshold for a minute, catching her breath. Fortunately, the undead thing Vax had dispatched was out of sight. All she saw was the familiar graveyard, and the first few pinpricks of starlight above.

“What do you intend to tell your brother?” Vax asked, slowly bringing her back to herself.

“The truth,” she said, with a _what else?_ sort of shrug. “Some of it, anyway. He probably won’t believe me, but I’ll try.” After a second she asked, “Can I bring him here sometime to see?”

Vax’s eyebrows lifted, like the idea hadn’t really occurred to him before. “I suppose I’d be a poor champion if I kept Her followers from Her shrine. If that’s what you are.”

Callie thought of that vast, terrifying void again, dotted with light though it was. That figure, and her mask. She shivered. “I…don’t know yet.”

“Well. You have plenty of time to decide.” His tone went pointed. “But don’t come alone until this place is safe. And daylight _might_ be a better idea.”

Callie dropped her gaze, embarrassed. When she did, she saw her own fidgeting hands, and she stopped. Something on her left wrist had just gleamed.

Still twined around it was a single golden thread.

“What is it?” Vax asked. She just swiveled her wrist, studying the tiny, intricate knot binding the thread in place. She had a moment of contemplating wild possibilities. Then she lowered her hand and tugged her sleeve down.

“I think I got my proof after all,” was all she said. 

Vax gave her one of those odd looks again. This time, though, there was a hint of a crooked smile in it. “I’ll walk you to the gate,” he told her.

They left the graveyard past a pair of puzzled guards, who obviously disapproved of Callie’s presence, but couldn’t protest in front of Vax. He gave her a gentle but firm reminder to go straight home, as if she needed it. Then he turned to walk away. Callie suspected she wasn’t supposed to wait and watch, but the part of her that understood why Dillon loved wild tales wanted to know if Vax really would walk off like a regular person, or take to the skies and fly. It was too dark now to tell for sure, and the guards blocked part of her view, but there was, she thought, a sound somewhat like the unfurling of wings, and in the distance, there was the echo of a single raven’s call.

Callie touched the thread on her wrist, then let go and went to find her brother.

She had a tremendous story to tell.


End file.
